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Chapter 1
For one infinite moment,time itself stood suspended.
No more shouts. No more laughter. The allies and enemies behind me might as well have ceased to exist, their opinions and complaints no more relevant than the dust beneath my boots. The howling of the wind, the flickering torches, the shards of the shattered binding on the rocky ground of the Cobalt Court … they could have been a million miles away, and I would not have noticed.
All I saw was Creon, dark eyes burning in the night, fingers gripping my arm with a strength that threatened to leave bruises. And all I heard …
Em. Emelin.
The syllables hung in the air between us like the sweetest, hoarsest treasure.
He’dspokenthose words. I’dheardthose words. Guttural and gravelly, perhaps, his voice brittle from decades of disuse – but those coughs and rasps had broken the silence all the same, unfamiliar sounds yet brimming with an emotion that was far from new. I’d seen it smouldering in his eyes so many times before. I’d felt it in his fingers on my skin.
Emelin.
Hot tears suddenly stung behind my eyelids, threatening to spill over.
And then, in a flash of muscular limbs and velvety wings, the world snapped back into motion – movements so fast my mind didn’t comprehend what was happening until Creon was already standing, until those scarred hands of his had already dragged me to my feet. Dark wings swept out wide, obscuring the starry sky. Someone sputtered some objection behind me, about things to be done and dangers to be minded … but Creon didn’t waver as he scooped me into his arms and flexed his fingers in a silent reminder of the explosive magic always lurking below his skin.
Whoever had unwisely opened their mouth hurriedly corrected the mistake.
We shot into the night sky so fast my heart plummeted into my stomach.
My cry was lost in the rush of air whipping past us, the whoosh of his powerful wings. Darkness swallowed us within moments. As soon as we soared past the first jagged mountain ridge, out of sight of the torches, nothing but stars and silhouettes remained in the pale moonlight. I clung to Creon’s labouring shoulders for dear life as the cold wind tore at my dress and hair, squeezing my eyes shut so as not to see the gaping void beneath us; if I was going to fall, I much preferred not knowing in advance how bad it would be.
Where in hell was hegoing?
But he was already descending before I could ask, my vital organs now pulled in the opposite direction as his wings surrendered us to gravity – the descent so close to an actual plunge that I would have screamed again if not for his unwavering arms around me. My eyes flew open in a panicked reflex. Before us, the dark ocean stretched all the way to the horizon, the waxing moon accompanied by its distorted reflection on the surface. A small bay nestled in the coastline, and it was for that crescent-shaped beach Creon seemed to be aiming, his back and shoulders straining furiously as we dropped down the last dozens of feet.
He’d never landed so clumsily with me in his arms, not even after the Mother’s ball, when I’d been lust-dazed enough to fondle him in deeply unhelpful places as he flew. Half-standing, half-stumbling, he regained his balance and released me, falling to his knees the moment I’d found my footing in the black sand.
‘Creon,’ I managed, my brain lagging several minutes behind.
‘Sorry,’ he rasped as his fingers reflexively twitched through the corresponding sign; he stared at them for a moment, then raised his hand to his throat, as if to rub his vocal cords. ‘So sorry. Just—’
Another string of grating coughs overcame him mid-sentence.
‘Alright,’ I said, casting one glance at his convulsing body and shuddering wings and deciding that the questions and explanations could wait. ‘Never mind. Let me find you something to drink. Don’t suffocate in the meantime, please.’
The tense motions of his fingers were barely readable in the moonlight.Will try.
Thank the gods for the black sand: it offered plenty of magic to change a nearby rock into a workable, albeit roughly-shaped, cup and to remove the salt from the seawater withan experimental shade of deep orange. The result still tasted strongly of minerals, but no longer so briny.
Creon drank it down so swiftly I doubted he’d tasted anything at all.
‘Thank you.’ He dragged out the words like heavy weights – gods help me, thatvoice. Dry and croaking, as if he was recovering from a heavy flu after weeks of coughing and wheezing … but it made my toes curl in my boots all the same, that damaged, glorious sound. ‘Fuck. Sorry. What—’
Again his vocal cords seemed to crumple as his throat convulsed in throaty rasps.
‘You know what?’ I wryly said, dropping into the sand beside him. It was still warm against my legs from the sunlight of the day. ‘Let’s just stick with signing for now. We can try talking once you’ve worked your way through a bucket of cough syrup.’
The sound that escaped him was half-wheeze, half-groan.This is infuriating.
It was. Gods help me, it was. I wanted to hear him again,yearnedfor him to speak my name out loud again –Emelin– with that breathless reverence that turned the plain old syllables into a brand new enchantment. Then again …
‘Would it be any less infuriating to cough your throat to shreds and have to wait for it to heal?’
No.He dragged in one more shuddering breath, then tucked his wings in against his back and rubbed a hand over his face, allowing his shoulders to slump.What in hell happened?
